Neil Cavuto cuts off Rep. E.B. Johnson

12/13/12 4:50 PM EST

Fox News' Neil Cavuto cut to commercial during a heated interview with Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson where the congresswoman told him to “shut up for just a second” and he later called their discussion “a total waste of time.”

The Texas Democrat and Cavuto on Thursday argued over the fiscal cliff battle for several minutes before the interview came to an abrupt end. Cavuto repeatedly asked Johnson what things she would cut and the congresswoman countered that what should be discussed is "revenue generation."

“No, you told me things you’d do to raise taxes. That’s what you told me. Credits, allowances, that sort of stuff. That’s what you told me,” Cavuto said.

“You’ve got to talk about revenue generation,” the congresswoman replied.

“It is not 100 percent of what I’m talking about. If you’d shut up for just a second, I would try,” Johnson said.

Cavuto then jumped in, saying, “You gotta tell me one thing you’d cut. I beg you Congresswoman, one thing you would say, I would cut this. What would it be?”

When Johnson did not reply with anything more than “you" and a pause, Cavuto asked, “You don’t know, do you?”

“Well, yes I do know, but I have to have time to explain it. I can’t tell you I’m going to walk in and cut this and cut that. First of all, it has to have some type of dialogue. We have not had that,” she said.

The two continued to go back and forth until Johnson said that Democrats have already said what cuts their party is willing to consider, and with that, Cavuto was done with the interview.

“Well, you haven’t done that,” he replied. “You haven’t done that. You haven’t done that. But hope springs eternal máam, and Congresswoman I want to get you back, but this was a total waste of time.”

Johnson tried to speak over Cavuto saying, “You might be consulting with the Republicans.” Fox News then cut to commercial as the congresswoman said, “I am not, because we have not had the opportunity.”

When the show returned from its commercial break, Cavuto offered an apology to the congresswoman and to viewers — but noted that all he wanted was “a simple answer” to his repeated question, “What would you cut?”

“Alright, first off folks I want to apologize to the Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson and to you who might have been offended by my interrupting the congresswoman, not allowing, uh, a simple answer. But that’s all I wanted. A simple answer. What would you cut?” he said.

Cavuto added that there isn’t much time left to make a deal on the fiscal cliff and “both sides have to bring something to the table. Both sides have to be specific, and when they are not, it gets maybe a little bit ugly.”

“But I keep telling you here, I've done this to Republicans and to Democrats, I’ve done this to those who say they'll outline revenues but never do, outline cuts but never do. I'm not red or blue here, I'm just green and I'm seeing red right now for the craziness of all the green that’s going, but we got to do this sort of thing. We'll stay on it,” he said.